Hello all, Nathan here, Ben's husband.
I'm writing this very short placeholder blog post, as Ben has been up since the crack of dawn, orchestrating and formatting the prologue for Brass. It's a twelve-minute epic of a number, and although it's going to be an amazing opener for what is shaping up to be an extraordinary show, it comes with about a gazillion key changes, time changes, and different sections in varying musical styles, so it's certainly taking its time.
I got home from Leicestershire, where I've just finished the penultimate week of my run of South Pacific (or Non-Specific, as a good friend of mine calls it...) at about a quarter to twelve, and found Ben in the kitchen pulling out clumps of hair.
A couple of computer crashes later, with a handful of tiredness errors thrown in for good measure, a minor catastrophe and teary moment to boot, it looks like he's finally nearly there with it, but it became clear that if either of us ever wanted to get to bed tonight, it would be a good idea for me to do a guest spot tonight.
Tomorrow is a new day for Ben, and brings new events with it: he has a top secret render-vous with a prominent member of the Royal Family, but I'm not at liberty to say who, or what it's about. How terribly exciting!
Sadly, with Brass taking up so much of Ben's time, and with me being away in a forest for the past two months, we haven't had the time to plan our honeymoon yet, but we will get round to that very soon. At the moment it looks like we'll be going away to the States for the first two weeks of September, and finally getting the chance to put our generous Trailfinder fund, that many of our wedding guests contributed to, to good use. I can't wait!
Anyway, it's LONG past bedtime for this guest blogger, and I'm signing off. Ben will be back tomorrow, hopefully in a saner state of mind!
Love to all, Nx
Monday, 7 July 2014
Sunday, 6 July 2014
Pollarding
The little chink of loveliness in an otherwise highly dull day was a lunchtime jaunt into Muswell Hill to meet Llio and Little Michelle for lunch. We sat in our favourite cafe whilst the weather did pretty much everything outside. There was bright sunshine (so bright, in fact, that the owners of the cafe had to close the blinds) then wind and rain and everything in between.
Michelle and I walked home through Highgate Woods. It is my aim to convert everyone to the joys of North London living, and, frankly, five minutes in that beautiful place is enough to make any south Londoner question the meaning of life! The trees in the wood are slowly darkening. They start as a yellowy shade of lime green in spring and slowly darken until it's time for them to go yellow again. The cycles of nature - particularly regarding colour - never cease to amaze me.
On the way to the woods we saw a street full of trees which has just been pollarded to within an inch of their lives. All the twigs and leaves had been removed, and all that was left was a set of little stumps. I'd be furious if I were a resident of that street. The point of living in a tree-lined street at this time of year is to benefit from the wonderful shade the trees create. Everyone knows the temperature of a tree-covered street is 2-3 degrees cooler than one without. So why cut off all the leaves in Mid summer? Just when they're most needed. That'll be Haringey council getting a better deal on off-peak pollarding, I suspect... There's nothing more heartbreaking than looking at a pollarded tree. Imagine how sad those trees must feel. Just as they start to enjoy being grand and dignified - supporting life and everything - they get sheered like silly sheep! And what happens to the squirrels' dreys and birds' nests when the trees get shaved?
It's 12.30 and I'm waiting for my friends Moira and Alex to arrive. They're staying the night here tonight after their wonderful circus which is still happening at Jackson's Lane theatre. I have decided to keep working until they arrive!
Michelle and I walked home through Highgate Woods. It is my aim to convert everyone to the joys of North London living, and, frankly, five minutes in that beautiful place is enough to make any south Londoner question the meaning of life! The trees in the wood are slowly darkening. They start as a yellowy shade of lime green in spring and slowly darken until it's time for them to go yellow again. The cycles of nature - particularly regarding colour - never cease to amaze me.
On the way to the woods we saw a street full of trees which has just been pollarded to within an inch of their lives. All the twigs and leaves had been removed, and all that was left was a set of little stumps. I'd be furious if I were a resident of that street. The point of living in a tree-lined street at this time of year is to benefit from the wonderful shade the trees create. Everyone knows the temperature of a tree-covered street is 2-3 degrees cooler than one without. So why cut off all the leaves in Mid summer? Just when they're most needed. That'll be Haringey council getting a better deal on off-peak pollarding, I suspect... There's nothing more heartbreaking than looking at a pollarded tree. Imagine how sad those trees must feel. Just as they start to enjoy being grand and dignified - supporting life and everything - they get sheered like silly sheep! And what happens to the squirrels' dreys and birds' nests when the trees get shaved?
It's 12.30 and I'm waiting for my friends Moira and Alex to arrive. They're staying the night here tonight after their wonderful circus which is still happening at Jackson's Lane theatre. I have decided to keep working until they arrive!
Saturday, 5 July 2014
No fire!
Today I put a pair of shorts on for the first time this summer. I'm not really a shorts kind of man. In fact, I realised with horror when I saw a photograph of me standing in the Avebury crop circle, that I was doing so in a linen suit! I was like someone's uncle in a Merchant Ivory film!
Any way, I put my mobile phone in the pocket of the shorts for safe keeping whilst I was at the gym, and it was only when I removed it that I realised the pockets were full of sand from The Dominican Republic. Cue a rush of happy, sun-drenched memories of surfing the gentle waves, swimming in blue pools and watching glorious sun sets. It's hard to believe we were ever there, really. I think our wedding rather eclipsed everything that happened any time around it, and it's only now that I'm probably coming back down to earth enough to give myself time to reflect on the year so far, which has undoubtedly been the most interesting of my life. If this is what being 40 is like, then bring it on!
I actually watched the vows from our wedding on 4OD this morning. I felt a bit tragic doing so on my own, but I'd woken up feeling a little listless and lonely with the music buzzing around in my head, so put them on. Because I spooled through to the 3rd part, I had to sit through an accumulation of six minutes of adverts, which was slightly annoying, but gave me time for a bath.
Watching the opulence of the wedding in our grotty kitchen was utterly surreal. I felt like I was seeing a play: one I'm not even sure I remember acting in! I don't remember feeling as fat as I looked, however, and am most relieved to have subsequently lost some of the weight which made me look like melted butter. Just call me the Oprah Winfrey of gay marriage!
After the gym I went into Kentish Town to buy some buttons, (yes, I say, buttons, I say, from a little haberdashers to mend my suit with...) In the princess I passed the building which I'd watched go up in flames the day before. To my surprise the Kebab shop was open and looking as grottily pristine as it always has. I can only think, therefore, that the fire was on the flat roof above the shop somehow. Perhaps someone had thrown a mattress there and tried to set fire to it rather than put it out on the street. The whole thing has very much made me doubt my sanity! Surely I've not developed a condition where I see fires I should have asked in the shop, but that seemed a little ghoulish...
Any way, I put my mobile phone in the pocket of the shorts for safe keeping whilst I was at the gym, and it was only when I removed it that I realised the pockets were full of sand from The Dominican Republic. Cue a rush of happy, sun-drenched memories of surfing the gentle waves, swimming in blue pools and watching glorious sun sets. It's hard to believe we were ever there, really. I think our wedding rather eclipsed everything that happened any time around it, and it's only now that I'm probably coming back down to earth enough to give myself time to reflect on the year so far, which has undoubtedly been the most interesting of my life. If this is what being 40 is like, then bring it on!
I actually watched the vows from our wedding on 4OD this morning. I felt a bit tragic doing so on my own, but I'd woken up feeling a little listless and lonely with the music buzzing around in my head, so put them on. Because I spooled through to the 3rd part, I had to sit through an accumulation of six minutes of adverts, which was slightly annoying, but gave me time for a bath.
Watching the opulence of the wedding in our grotty kitchen was utterly surreal. I felt like I was seeing a play: one I'm not even sure I remember acting in! I don't remember feeling as fat as I looked, however, and am most relieved to have subsequently lost some of the weight which made me look like melted butter. Just call me the Oprah Winfrey of gay marriage!
After the gym I went into Kentish Town to buy some buttons, (yes, I say, buttons, I say, from a little haberdashers to mend my suit with...) In the princess I passed the building which I'd watched go up in flames the day before. To my surprise the Kebab shop was open and looking as grottily pristine as it always has. I can only think, therefore, that the fire was on the flat roof above the shop somehow. Perhaps someone had thrown a mattress there and tried to set fire to it rather than put it out on the street. The whole thing has very much made me doubt my sanity! Surely I've not developed a condition where I see fires I should have asked in the shop, but that seemed a little ghoulish...
Friday, 4 July 2014
Fire!
It's been another fiendishly hot day today and I spent the morning sitting at the kitchen table, working like a dog, whilst staring enviously out of the window. "That little tent of blue which prisoners call sky..." Whilst working I boiled a load of dodgy looking vegetables to make a soup. I put too many stock cubes in it, so it ended up decidedly salty, but delicious none the less.
Having decided that the intensity of work was making my eyes go all funny, I gulped down the soup (whilst working) and then legged it to the gym, whereupon I stumbled across the mother of all fires. It had started in the kebab shop next to the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town, and was turning into a rather shocking inferno by the time the fire brigade arrived.
For about a minute it looked very worrying indeed. The windows were open in all of the flats above the shop and thick black smoke and long licks of fire were pouring in. I half expected to see a little frightened face at one of the windows, and that would have upset me enormously. Fortunately, as I reached the tube, I looked back and the noxious black smoke had turned into a white cloud of steam. The firemen had won.. And in fact, they dealt with the fire so swiftly and effectively you'd think it had been some kind of exercise. It's times like this you realise how indebted we are to those brave, brave men.
I went into town to have my hair cut and was surprised/ horrified to find that Foyles bookshop has moved. It would appear to still be on Charing Cross Road, and I can only assume the move is a product of success rather than a slow disintegration based on the fact that no one reads physical books any more.
I had my hair cut on Old Compton Street. The woman insisted on washing my hair first because I'd dumped a load of wax on it at the gym. I'd forgotten how uncomfortable it is to have one's hair washed in a salon. You always end up with a big block of plastic pushing against your neck exactly where it's not wanted. She kept trying to talk to me, asking if the temperature of the water was okay, but all I could hear was the sound of her rubbing shampoo into my head, the splashing of water and the high-octane techno music they tend to play in cheap barber shops so that everyone feels like they've been to a party.
I worked in Soho, in Starbucks, for the rest of the afternoon and stumbled back to Highgate at around 8pm to miss the horrors of the rush hour. I was in something of a daze, however, and ended up at Chalk Farm, having taken the wrong sodding branch of the Northern Line. This meant doing the "Camden Hop", which involves crossing platforms at that particular station against a heavy flow of clueless tourists who have spent the day drifting around the markets and are in no hurry to return home. Unless you're carrying some kind of heavy suitcase, the only way to deal with it is by sharpening the elbows, taking a deep breath and literally ramming your way through the mayhem.
I continue to feel decidedly peculiar with the strangest of symptoms surging through my body. Glands up everywhere. Strange pains. Dreadful lethargy. But I battle onward...
Having decided that the intensity of work was making my eyes go all funny, I gulped down the soup (whilst working) and then legged it to the gym, whereupon I stumbled across the mother of all fires. It had started in the kebab shop next to the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town, and was turning into a rather shocking inferno by the time the fire brigade arrived.
For about a minute it looked very worrying indeed. The windows were open in all of the flats above the shop and thick black smoke and long licks of fire were pouring in. I half expected to see a little frightened face at one of the windows, and that would have upset me enormously. Fortunately, as I reached the tube, I looked back and the noxious black smoke had turned into a white cloud of steam. The firemen had won.. And in fact, they dealt with the fire so swiftly and effectively you'd think it had been some kind of exercise. It's times like this you realise how indebted we are to those brave, brave men.
I went into town to have my hair cut and was surprised/ horrified to find that Foyles bookshop has moved. It would appear to still be on Charing Cross Road, and I can only assume the move is a product of success rather than a slow disintegration based on the fact that no one reads physical books any more.
I had my hair cut on Old Compton Street. The woman insisted on washing my hair first because I'd dumped a load of wax on it at the gym. I'd forgotten how uncomfortable it is to have one's hair washed in a salon. You always end up with a big block of plastic pushing against your neck exactly where it's not wanted. She kept trying to talk to me, asking if the temperature of the water was okay, but all I could hear was the sound of her rubbing shampoo into my head, the splashing of water and the high-octane techno music they tend to play in cheap barber shops so that everyone feels like they've been to a party.
I worked in Soho, in Starbucks, for the rest of the afternoon and stumbled back to Highgate at around 8pm to miss the horrors of the rush hour. I was in something of a daze, however, and ended up at Chalk Farm, having taken the wrong sodding branch of the Northern Line. This meant doing the "Camden Hop", which involves crossing platforms at that particular station against a heavy flow of clueless tourists who have spent the day drifting around the markets and are in no hurry to return home. Unless you're carrying some kind of heavy suitcase, the only way to deal with it is by sharpening the elbows, taking a deep breath and literally ramming your way through the mayhem.
I continue to feel decidedly peculiar with the strangest of symptoms surging through my body. Glands up everywhere. Strange pains. Dreadful lethargy. But I battle onward...
Thursday, 3 July 2014
Life begins
I woke myself up in the night by thrashing around on the bed. I'd managed to throw myself on top of Nathan as though I were attempting to save him from a grenade. This being stressed business is no good at all. My glands are up, my heart is racing. A visit to the gym improved matters a little by giving me a focus for the bolts of adrenaline surging through my body. I think the problem is largely down to my having started a new process on Brass, which, very much like the last one, seems to stretch out in front of me towards the horizon in the form of a monotonous road which I can only walk at a certain pace.
Still, with every day I tick off another song once and for all. Three down, seventeen to go...
At present I'm dividing my day into three shifts. I work from 10-1 at the kitchen table before eating and going to the gym, I then work from 3-6 in Cafe Rustique, walk home, have tea and then work from 7-9.30 with the telly on in the background. I reserve for the evening shift the sorts of tasks I can do with my eyes shut, namely the formatting of parts, which basically involves making everything look pretty.
I find myself looking forward to the most surreal things during the day. Another ten bars of detailed work and I'll allow myself a quick look at emails or a cup of tea or a little stretch. The walk up Dartmouth Park Hill and through Waterlow Park is the absolute highlight of the day. I take the opportunity to write this blog or catch up with phone calls. My mind, for a glorious 35 minutes, is taken away from the minuscule world of orchestration and into the sunshine and green trees of North London.
There's really nothing else to write. Nathan came home last night, which was an unexpected surprise, but it was jolly nice to have breakfast and lunch with him this morning. I take every opportunity to remind him that he's now a year older than me. I used to have the same with my brother in reverse. For the month of August I was only a year younger than him, and then his birthday would come around again, and suddenly he was my big brother once more.
When do we stop wanting to be older? Is it at the age of 21 or 30?
Still, with every day I tick off another song once and for all. Three down, seventeen to go...
At present I'm dividing my day into three shifts. I work from 10-1 at the kitchen table before eating and going to the gym, I then work from 3-6 in Cafe Rustique, walk home, have tea and then work from 7-9.30 with the telly on in the background. I reserve for the evening shift the sorts of tasks I can do with my eyes shut, namely the formatting of parts, which basically involves making everything look pretty.
I find myself looking forward to the most surreal things during the day. Another ten bars of detailed work and I'll allow myself a quick look at emails or a cup of tea or a little stretch. The walk up Dartmouth Park Hill and through Waterlow Park is the absolute highlight of the day. I take the opportunity to write this blog or catch up with phone calls. My mind, for a glorious 35 minutes, is taken away from the minuscule world of orchestration and into the sunshine and green trees of North London.
There's really nothing else to write. Nathan came home last night, which was an unexpected surprise, but it was jolly nice to have breakfast and lunch with him this morning. I take every opportunity to remind him that he's now a year older than me. I used to have the same with my brother in reverse. For the month of August I was only a year younger than him, and then his birthday would come around again, and suddenly he was my big brother once more.
When do we stop wanting to be older? Is it at the age of 21 or 30?
Wednesday, 2 July 2014
The world is upside down
So, Rolf Harris has become the latest in an ever-growing list of important role models from my childhood to be found guilty of child molestation, and, whilst he awaits sentencing, the media is focusing on what Harris is worth and how much of that should be given to his victims in compensation... Cue an absolute rush to the colours of other women claiming their lives have been wrecked by this "evil" man. It strikes me that it's becoming terribly easy to suddenly remember how messed up we were by figures from our childhood, usually the moment a sum of potential money is placed on a table.
I don't know the details of the Harris case. Whatever happened is terribly sad, and if he did have a penchant for younger girls, then I'm glad the culture in this country has changed so that that sort of behaviour is no longer swept under the carpet by institutions.
That said, I worry we're heading somewhere really dark, which will ultimately lead to children making claims against their parents and teachers for everything from being made to do too much homework to being fed too much sugar. It seems we're all looking for someone to blame for our complicated lives, and in my view, not being able to take responsibility for your own actions is one of the greatest crimes known to man...
The upshot of the whole sorry business is that Mr Harris' once glittering career is now dead. What makes me particularly sad is that he is a real talent, who certainly made my childhood a brighter, better place. Despite this, his paintings will plainly now halve in value. His grand children will be ridiculed in the playground. His wife and daughter will be spat at in the street for defending him. Ultimately we got what we wanted; a Jimmy Savile who isn't dead... And finally we can stand on our holier than thou soap boxes and make him suffer accordingly despite his crimes being a mere fraction of those of Savile.
Nadia Swahala on Loose Women today even accused Harris of "conning the nation into thinking he was entertaining us but actually using his position for his own foul means." That's right, Nadia. He presented Animal Hospital so that he could abuse his daughter's childhood friend.
I strongly believe that if Harris had murdered an adult in cold blood that his paintings would have actually appreciated in value and yet, because of the nature of his crimes, people I actually know are in the process of tearing down Rolf Harris limited edition prints from their walls. When I think about the crimes committed by artists and creative people in the past, I shudder, but do we refused to listen to pop music produced by Phil Spector or Joe Meek?
Unlike Meek, or Spectre, or indeed Ben Johnson, or painter Richard Dadd, Harris didn't kill anyone. Furthermore, his family obviously think that he's a fairly decent sort because; despite his crimes, they're standing by him. The bottom line is that he remains a wonderful painter, who brought art, wobble boards, curiously shaved goatee beards and sick animals to a whole generation of kids. And that, I'm afraid, is how I personally will choose to remember him. Anything else, and my childhood is turned on its head, and I shall be forced to sue the BBC for lying to me...
What makes me particularly mad is that we seem to only queue up to condemn and be appalled when it suits us. How many British Muslims, for example, are currently lobbying Hamas not to murder any more Jewish teenagers? And even on the issue of paedophilia, when someone is found innocent, we shrug our shoulders and say that there's no smoke without fire. The case against my friend Roy Harper was thrown out of court, but did the media report his innocence? How many of the people who tweeted bile on the day he was arrested, tweeted their apologies? I don't often find myself quoting the bible, but wasn't it Jesus himself who is meant to have said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone?" So unless you live your lives like Mother Theresa (and even she was meant to have been a tricky fish) perhaps it's time to exert a bit of compassion and instead of condemning, looking around your own worlds to see if there's someone in potential trouble who you can help.
I don't know the details of the Harris case. Whatever happened is terribly sad, and if he did have a penchant for younger girls, then I'm glad the culture in this country has changed so that that sort of behaviour is no longer swept under the carpet by institutions.
That said, I worry we're heading somewhere really dark, which will ultimately lead to children making claims against their parents and teachers for everything from being made to do too much homework to being fed too much sugar. It seems we're all looking for someone to blame for our complicated lives, and in my view, not being able to take responsibility for your own actions is one of the greatest crimes known to man...
The upshot of the whole sorry business is that Mr Harris' once glittering career is now dead. What makes me particularly sad is that he is a real talent, who certainly made my childhood a brighter, better place. Despite this, his paintings will plainly now halve in value. His grand children will be ridiculed in the playground. His wife and daughter will be spat at in the street for defending him. Ultimately we got what we wanted; a Jimmy Savile who isn't dead... And finally we can stand on our holier than thou soap boxes and make him suffer accordingly despite his crimes being a mere fraction of those of Savile.
Nadia Swahala on Loose Women today even accused Harris of "conning the nation into thinking he was entertaining us but actually using his position for his own foul means." That's right, Nadia. He presented Animal Hospital so that he could abuse his daughter's childhood friend.
I strongly believe that if Harris had murdered an adult in cold blood that his paintings would have actually appreciated in value and yet, because of the nature of his crimes, people I actually know are in the process of tearing down Rolf Harris limited edition prints from their walls. When I think about the crimes committed by artists and creative people in the past, I shudder, but do we refused to listen to pop music produced by Phil Spector or Joe Meek?
Unlike Meek, or Spectre, or indeed Ben Johnson, or painter Richard Dadd, Harris didn't kill anyone. Furthermore, his family obviously think that he's a fairly decent sort because; despite his crimes, they're standing by him. The bottom line is that he remains a wonderful painter, who brought art, wobble boards, curiously shaved goatee beards and sick animals to a whole generation of kids. And that, I'm afraid, is how I personally will choose to remember him. Anything else, and my childhood is turned on its head, and I shall be forced to sue the BBC for lying to me...
What makes me particularly mad is that we seem to only queue up to condemn and be appalled when it suits us. How many British Muslims, for example, are currently lobbying Hamas not to murder any more Jewish teenagers? And even on the issue of paedophilia, when someone is found innocent, we shrug our shoulders and say that there's no smoke without fire. The case against my friend Roy Harper was thrown out of court, but did the media report his innocence? How many of the people who tweeted bile on the day he was arrested, tweeted their apologies? I don't often find myself quoting the bible, but wasn't it Jesus himself who is meant to have said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone?" So unless you live your lives like Mother Theresa (and even she was meant to have been a tricky fish) perhaps it's time to exert a bit of compassion and instead of condemning, looking around your own worlds to see if there's someone in potential trouble who you can help.
Tuesday, 1 July 2014
Avebury
Today, the wonderful setting of Avebury in Wiltshire served to remind us that magic still exists in the world if you open your mind to it.
It's Nathan's 40th birthday today. At the start of last week we decided it would be lovely to use the occasion to make our annual pilgrimage to Avebury, one of our favourite places in the world: home of a prehistoric stone circle so large there's a village in the middle of it!
Obviously there's a limit to how many people are able to join a mission of this description on a Monday in term time, but fortunately Abbie, Ali, my sister-in-law, Sam, her partner Julius and Nathan's nephew Lewis and his partner Grace stepped into the breach.
It's hard to say what it is which makes Avebury so special, beyond the obvious fact that it's the largest set of standing stones known to man and happens to be in an area of the UK which is surely ranked as one of the most mystical places in the world. There's something about the light there. The chalky soil reflects the sun perhaps. The trees have their own special colour.
The day started with a trip to Avebury Manor, a building which featured on a BBC series which I think was called To The Manor Reborn. The basic premise was that Penelope Keith and Paul Martin would assist a group of experts in restoring a ramshackle country house, the twist being that each room would be decorated to reflect a different era in the building's past, from Tudor times all the way up to the outbreak of World War Two.
Nathan has a friend who works at the manor who smuggled the eight of us in to have a snoop around. We had a ball wandering from room to room attempting to guess the era it had been decorated in whilst chatting up the tour guides.
There was a very peculiar atmosphere in one of the corridors which Ali and I both picked up on in spades. It was a sort of pressure. Like we'd suddenly gone underwater. That's the only way I can describe it. When we mentioned it to the tour guide, she laughed and told us it was the very corridor where the ghost of a monk was said to roam.
We left the manor and did the obligatory walk around the enormous stone circle, past the tree with remarkable roots where generations of spiritual people have hung ribbons and left messages to the universe.
We settled on an area on the earthworks overlooking one of the lesser-visited sets of stones and had a picnic surrounded by wild flowers and butterflies, inventing a game in the process which involved sliding down the steep hillside on a giant plastic sheet. Immense fun.
Sam and her crew left, and the rest of us went on to the West Kennet Long-barrow; a 5000-year old burial chamber which sits in the middle of an enormous corn field in the shadow of Silbery Hill, which itself is an impressive man-made mound which dominates the countryside in that part of the world.
More excitingly, as we exited the dark cave-like barrow, we realised the corn circle we were standing beside had not one but two crop circles inside! I hadn't seen a real crop circle since I was eighteen, and one appeared in a field just outside Rushden, which a group of us sat in on the evening of my 18th birthday.
It was, therefore, quite magical for me to repeat that experience, 22 years on, as the sun melted like honey on Nathan's special day.
A glorious, glorious occasion.
It's Nathan's 40th birthday today. At the start of last week we decided it would be lovely to use the occasion to make our annual pilgrimage to Avebury, one of our favourite places in the world: home of a prehistoric stone circle so large there's a village in the middle of it!
Obviously there's a limit to how many people are able to join a mission of this description on a Monday in term time, but fortunately Abbie, Ali, my sister-in-law, Sam, her partner Julius and Nathan's nephew Lewis and his partner Grace stepped into the breach.
It's hard to say what it is which makes Avebury so special, beyond the obvious fact that it's the largest set of standing stones known to man and happens to be in an area of the UK which is surely ranked as one of the most mystical places in the world. There's something about the light there. The chalky soil reflects the sun perhaps. The trees have their own special colour.
The day started with a trip to Avebury Manor, a building which featured on a BBC series which I think was called To The Manor Reborn. The basic premise was that Penelope Keith and Paul Martin would assist a group of experts in restoring a ramshackle country house, the twist being that each room would be decorated to reflect a different era in the building's past, from Tudor times all the way up to the outbreak of World War Two.
Nathan has a friend who works at the manor who smuggled the eight of us in to have a snoop around. We had a ball wandering from room to room attempting to guess the era it had been decorated in whilst chatting up the tour guides.
There was a very peculiar atmosphere in one of the corridors which Ali and I both picked up on in spades. It was a sort of pressure. Like we'd suddenly gone underwater. That's the only way I can describe it. When we mentioned it to the tour guide, she laughed and told us it was the very corridor where the ghost of a monk was said to roam.
We left the manor and did the obligatory walk around the enormous stone circle, past the tree with remarkable roots where generations of spiritual people have hung ribbons and left messages to the universe.
We settled on an area on the earthworks overlooking one of the lesser-visited sets of stones and had a picnic surrounded by wild flowers and butterflies, inventing a game in the process which involved sliding down the steep hillside on a giant plastic sheet. Immense fun.
Sam and her crew left, and the rest of us went on to the West Kennet Long-barrow; a 5000-year old burial chamber which sits in the middle of an enormous corn field in the shadow of Silbery Hill, which itself is an impressive man-made mound which dominates the countryside in that part of the world.
More excitingly, as we exited the dark cave-like barrow, we realised the corn circle we were standing beside had not one but two crop circles inside! I hadn't seen a real crop circle since I was eighteen, and one appeared in a field just outside Rushden, which a group of us sat in on the evening of my 18th birthday.
It was, therefore, quite magical for me to repeat that experience, 22 years on, as the sun melted like honey on Nathan's special day.
A glorious, glorious occasion.
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